Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis, and Karine Polwart have announced the release of their new album Looking For The Thread (Thirty Tigers) on January 24; an exciting debut collaboration from the trio. The full press release below digs deep into the project’s genesis and includes the first single from the album ‘Hold Everything’ plus details of a not-to-be-missed run of UK shows set for March 2025.
First single “Hold Everything” is out now. Penned by Karine Polwart, the song gives a nod to the world, as it is, and to John Berger’s beautiful and devastating 2008 book Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance.
No-one quite knew what to expect when multiple Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter sought a collaboration with two of the most adventurous and versatile artists in Scottish music, Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart – least of all the trio themselves.
The results, it transpires, rank among the career highlights of all three. Conceived in the remote west of Scotland and recorded in Spring 2024 at the renowned Real World studios, Looking For The Thread is a rich, resonant and unique record, one which supports and illuminates the core characteristics of each artist while bringing a powerful collective identity to the fore.
The 10-track album is produced by Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufman (Bob Weir, The National, The Hold Steady) and features a world-class musical ensemble: Rob Burger (piano, organ, accordion, keys), Chris Vatalaro (drums, percussion), Cameron Ralston (bass) and Kaufman himself (guitar, keys). The stunning contributions of Caoimhin O’Raghallaig, whose globally recognised innovations on the hardanger d’amore, a ten-string fiddle, can be heard in The Gloaming, in productions at the Abbey Theatre and in the film Brooklyn, encapsulate the collective spirit of adventure and creativity which defined the sessions.
The album is grounded in mutual respect stretching back decades. Polwart and Fowlis are dedicated fans of Mary Chapin Carpenter, the acclaimed American folk musician recognised as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the past half-century. She has sold over 16m records, won five Grammy Awards (with 18 career-spanning nominations), two CMAs and two Academy of Country Music awards.
Carpenter, in turn, has long admired Polwart and Fowlis. The former is a multi-award-winning Scottish songwriter, folk-singer and storyteller whose words and music conjure the connected magic and mystery of worlds, seen and unseen. Across numerous solo albums, collaborative projects, theatre shows and flights of imagination, Polwart has established herself as one of the most vital voices in Scottish music.
Julie Fowlis is internationally renowned, an award-winning singer whose extraordinary voice evokes the power and beauty of the Hebridean islands and Highland landscapes she calls home. Among her many and varied achievements, she will forever be recognised for singing the theme songs to Brave, Disney Pixar’s Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning animated film.
The notion of the trio joining forces dates to the long tail of the Covid pandemic. During that strange time, artists discovered new ways of working, of being, while contemplating long-cherished wish-list projects and thinking, If not now, when?
For Carpenter, the genesis was acknowledging that she had always coveted a collaborative venture but none had ever come to fruition. “I remember telling my manager I wanted to do this and he may have challenged me about who was on my wish list,” she says. “I’m certain I blurted out Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. Anything they do is brilliant and beautiful, and I wanted to fold myself right in there.”
Fowlis was the conduit. She had worked briefly with Carpenter some years ago on the Transatlantic Sessions, and had collaborated many times with Polwart, most recently on the Spell Songs project.
The response from all parties was immediate and effusive. After setting up a Dropbox to share ideas remotely, the three convened in January 2023 to perform alongside Robert Vincent at Song Circle, an event at Celtic Connections in Glasgow. From there, they headed north to a writing retreat at Kinlochmoidart House on the west coast. “It was like some Hollywood notion of the Scottish Highlands,” says Polwart. “Everything was conducive to creating. It was dark and we were hemmed in, sitting by the fire making stuff.”
They quickly established that the blend of voices and personalities was a strong one. “That first visit to Kinlochmoidart helped us feel that we had some things that might serve us,” says Carpenter. “We’d gather in the beautiful room where the fire was, play and sing together, and then go off to our little corners and work on stuff on our own, come back together, and get to the next step.”
The trio brought their own material but also wrote together. Although none of the co-written songs feature on the final album, “they were very much part of the process of working together,” says Fowlis. “It felt like it was essential that we did work on some songs together as a unit, and that definitely shaped what ended up on the record and the form that took.”
“There’s no way any of the four songs that I contributed would have existed in the way that they do without Karine and Julie,” says Carpenter. “So there’s *that* version of co-working together. It may not be a formal co-write, but the energy, the personality, the artistic thoughts shape the songs as well.”
Indeed, as they worked, a unity emerged which stretched beyond the blend of voices. The album is called Looking For The Thread and that is the quest the trio actively embarked upon. “You start to put particular things forward because there’s a resonance with something else,” says Polwart. “It’s not random. The way the songs have spun around each other has been very responsive. It felt very organic. It didn’t feel forced.”
This thematic interconnectivity is underscored by three album highlights: ‘Satellite’, ‘Rebecca’ and ‘Silver In The Blue’, written by Carpenter, Polwart and Fowlis, respectively. The songs are sung from the perspective of a decommissioned NASA ‘zombie spaceship’ condemned to drift forever in space; a century-old beech tree weathering a recent attack; and the mysterious journey of the ancient, now endangered, wild Atlantic salmon.
“There is such a degree of geekiness about those three songs that brings me genuine delight!” says Polwart. “There is also definitely something about the realm of sky and sea; the songs may not be about that, but the images you’re left with are birds, flight, time, travel... Although the songs were, on the face of it, quite different, they felt like they could easily sit together.”
The trio returned to Kinlochmoidart House in early 2024, this time with Kaufman in tow. All three sing his praises sky-high. “He stitched us together in a really positive way,” says Carpenter. “He was incredibly patient, supportive and encouraging. By the time we got in the studio, it felt really good and comfortable.”
The album was completed in a week at Real World studios. It was a joyous experience. They recorded the tracks live, everyone playing together in the same room, responding to the music in real time. “The songs hadn’t been pre-produced to within an inch of their lives and the band hadn’t heard them in advance,” says Polwart. “The musicians were such attentive listeners, none of them overplaying, all of them bringing a beautiful textural quality. There was something really beautiful and fresh about it.”
This approach left space for new ideas to emerge in the studio. The stunning opening track, ‘Gradh Geal Mo Chridhe’, was recorded for renowned Scottish accordion player, Fergie MacDonald, the ‘Ceilidh King’, who died in April 2024. To her great regret, Fowlis was unable to attend his funeral during the studio sessions, but was invited to send a song instead. She asked Polwart, Carpenter and the musicians whether they would mind setting aside an hour one morning to record the Gaelic standard, which had been MacDonald’s favourite song. They happily agreed. The recording was imbued with such obvious magic, it forced its way onto the final record.
It is one of two tracks sung in Scottish Gaelic, led by Fowlis. “The Gaelic songs are absolutely foundational to the project,” says Carpenter. As non-Gaelic speakers, both Carpenter and Polwart learned their parts phonetically. “I was really thrilled when Julie said we could try that. While I may not precisely know the translation in the moment I’m singing, there’s a lot of meaning there. It feels very deep and emotional.”
When recording was complete, all three artists, plus Kaufman and the musicians, turned the lights off in the studio, lay on the floor, and listened to what they had made. “There were no words, no critique,” says Polwart. “It was just us all tripping out and going on a wee journey. It was really beautiful. When I hear the songs, that’s what I picture in my head.”
And what do we hear when we listen? Songs of empathy, anger, connection, resilience and resolution. Songs as good as anything these three artists have ever written. And yes, we can hear the thread that binds us all together.
Next March, the trio will play five UK shows, taking in Manchester, Birmingham, the legendary London Palladium, Sunderland and Edinburgh. ‘An Evening With Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis, and Karine Polwart’ will see them performing songs from their new album Looking For The Thread and from across their catalogues, accompanied by their stellar international band.
Tickets on sale November 29.
02 March - Manchester - Aviva Studios
03 March - Birmingham - Town Hall
05 March - London - London Palladium
06 March - Sunderland - The Fire Station
07 March - Edinburgh - Festival Theatre
Never underestimate the Power of Three.
The Lost Words, a book of poetry and paintings by Jackie Morris and Robert MacFarlane began as a response to certain vocabulary being dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. It became a quiet yet powerful celebration of the trees, birds and animals that surround and sustain us. It was followed by a second book, ‘The Lost Spells’, and the Spell Songs project, on which the artist and poet collaborated with a carefully handpicked band of eight musicians (we’ll come to them in a bit). The slow burning popularity of the resultant first album, Spell Songs has no doubt been fuelled by a worldwide reconnection with the natural world. As lockdowns had us trading crowded nights out for solitary woodland walks to preserve our sanity, a newfound appreciation and fascination for these wild and delicate delights took hold and, for many, has refused to let go.